HOW UNMOORED ADMINISTRATIVE LAW IS FROM THE CONSTITUTION:

Facts Matter: CFPB Attempts to Use a Blog Post to Rewrite a 46-year-old Payments Statute (WESTON LOYD, 5/30/24, CBA)

Remarkably, the CFPB asks the court to rewrite the plain language of the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, and effectively reverse decades of settled law. By issuing the blog post, the CFPB presumably would apply this new “rule” to the industry at large.

Key Findings

The Electronic Fund Transfer Act and the implementing regulation, CFPB’s Regulation E, clearly excludes Wire Transfers.

Yet the CFPB now asserts that wire transfers initiated via electronic means are covered under Regulation E (rendering Regulation E’s exclusion meaningless).

The CFPB’s new interpretation of Regulation E would reverse decades of court decisions as well as the CFPB and Federal Reserve’s own prior regulatory filings.

Attempting to stretch electronic payments laws beyond their bounds is not a viable solution to address scams and fraud. Scams and fraud are serious, interdisciplinary problems. The financial services industry is working with stakeholders across other private sector industries, but need the CFPB and other agencies to commit to collaborating thoughtfully and earnestly in order to reduce the risks consumers face from scams and fraud.

A HIGH BAR:

From Judges to Justices: Keeping Executive Power in Check Is an Ancient Problem (HARVEST PRUDE, JULY 2, 2024, Christianity Today)

Daniel Darling, who is director of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Land Center for Cultural Engagement and has been critical of Trump, said reactions to the decision were perhaps overblown.

“Despite the screaming, the Court has strengthened democracy,” he wrote on X. “Trump has to prove his election-meddling was part of official acts. The government has to prove they weren’t. The court seems to lean in the direction that they weren’t.” […]

While the case on the surface deals with weighty legal matters of contemporary politics, one legal expert said the questions around the rule of law at the heart of the case are the same controversies that biblical figures wrestled with in the Old Testament.

“Much of the Old Testament are stories of kings abusing their power,” Robert Cochran, professor emeritus at Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law and coeditor of a 2013 InterVarsity Press book, Law and the Bible, told CT.

He pointed to the story of King Ahab, who coveted a vineyard owned by a man named Naboth. Naboth refused to sell. So Queen Jezebel had him killed, and Ahab took the vineyard.

Prior to Israel installing a king, the nation suffered from the opposite problem of general lawlessness. The Book of Judges explored the need for someone to be in charge, due to chaos caused by human sin, and the concern that human-held power is liable to corruption.

Cochran pointed to the last five chapters of Judges, where people unrestrained by the rule of law committed rapes, mass murders, kidnappings, and forced marriages (Judges 17–21).

“At the end of each story appears the refrain ‘In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes,’” Cochran said, citing Judges 21:25 (NLT). “The implication is clear: Israel needs a strong executive to enforce the law.”

But establishing a king did not fix ancient Israel’s problems either.

Imagine that Republican attorney generals could charge Joe criminally for all the bogus stuff they whinge about?